The Restory Retreat Centre

What The Mystics Know 3) Suffering brings growth and wisdom Detail from: "The Last Day of  Pompeii" by Karl Bryullov (1830-1833) The Conversation Elements From The Conversation ~ ❖ ~ “Suddenly, the sacred fire I have been chasing all my life engulfed me. I was plunged into the abyss, instantaneously dropped into the vast stillness and pulsing silence at which all my favorite mystics hint. So shattered I could not see my own hand in front of my face, I was suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of. Immolated, I found myself resting in fire. Drowning, I surrendered, and discovered I could breathe under water. So this was the state of profound suchness I had been searching for during all those years of contemplative practice. This was the holy longing the saints had been talking about in poems that had broken my heart again and again. This was the sacred emptiness that put that small smile on the face of the great sages. And I hated it. I didn’t want vastne...

In South Africa we call a small pickup a “bakkie”. It is an Afrikaans word that actually means a small bowl. You’ll give milk to a kitten or a puppy in a “bakkie”. How exactly it came to be used for this type of vehicle I don’t know. In our country with its 11 official languages, we borrow and mingle. Some words we don’t translate. We just use them “voetstoots”. As is. So, whether you’re English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, you’ll call any small pickup more or less up to a one tunner a bakkie. Thereafter it is a truck or a lorry. Were you to emigrate to another country you might find fairly similar vehicles, but you would miss using the word. There’s just nothing like a bakkie. And among bakkies there are Bakkies. Legends. You can get them only second hand. Or steal them. They’ve earned their reputation through years of use and reliability.  Driving one of them you get used to people walking around them, admiring them, kicking one of the tyres saying: “They don’t make them like...